It is a reasonable assumption that most, probably the vast majority, of vets conform reasonably well to the required standard of clinical waste disposal. However, it can be seen that so often some corners are cut.

For stockmen and farmers administering their own medications including preventative treatments and vaccine products, themselves highly regulated, regulated disposal of all associated wastes is at best improbable. Where it goes it a bit of a mystery, but farmers being farmers it will probably never properly be accounted for.

In the US everything is bigger, and perhaps in some ways it is better too. With huge farms and intensive stock operations many 10’s of times greater in size than anything in the UK and Europe the much more liberal administration of pharmaceuticals and vaccines to poultry, pigs, cows, and sheep  will generate substantial quantities of regulated clinical (medical) waste. Where does that go?

No doubt some of it slips under the radar. Much of it is however managed properly, and the market for on-site treatments is obviously valuable. This is evident in a piece on the Cattle Network, describing the Medical Innovations, Inc Medical Waste Machine. It’s a neat solution to sharps management suitable for small to medium volume producers. What happens to those wastes not suitable for processing in this way including, most importantly – there won’t be dressings and the like – pharmaceutical wastes, used drug vials etc? If there space in this device for the larger multi-use drug vials used in veterinary practice? Can it cope with the destruction of those residues? Are the treatment products really suitable for disposal as general trash, as claimed?

Regulators may want answers to those questions, and in all probability the work hasn’t been done to answer them properly. It might be realistic to assume that there would actually be more pharm waste and fewer sharps as animals would not receive the benefit of any single use syringe or needle. But does that matter, since this approach to sharps disposal is a simple, low cost option that is likely to be used in circumstances where other more mainstream collection and disposal routes probably wouldn’t be used.